es of vast
size, uncemented by mortar; and through the thick walls ran winding
passages--the only covered portions of the building, for the inner area
had never been furnished with a roof--in which, when a sudden shower
descended, the loiterer amid the ruins could find shelter. It was a
fascinating place to a curious boy. Some of the old trees had become
mere whitened skeletons, that stretched forth their blasted arms to the
sky, and had so slight a hold of the soil, that I have overthrown them
with a delightful crash, by merely running against them; the heath rose
thick beneath, and it was a source of fearful joy to know that it
harboured snakes full three feet long; and though the loch itself is by
no means one of our finer Highland lochs, it furnished, to at least my
eye at this time, a delightful prospect in still October mornings, when
the light gossamer went sailing about in white filmy threads, and birch
and hazel, glorified by decay, served to embroider with gold the brown
hillsides which, standing up on either hand in their long vista of more
than twenty miles, form the barriers of the lake; and when the sun,
still struggling with a blue diluted haze, fell delicately on the smooth
surface, or twinkled for a moment on the silvery coats of the little
trout, as they sprang a few inches into the air, and then broke the
water into a series of concentric rings in their descent. When I last
passed the way, both the old wood and the old tower were gone; and for
the latter, which, though much a ruin, might have survived for ages, I
found only a long extent of dry-stone dike, and the wide ring formed by
the old foundation-stones, which had proved too massive to be removed. A
greatly more entire erection of the same age and style, known of old as
Dunaliscag--which stood on the Ross-shire side of the Dornoch Firth, and
within whose walls, forming, as it did, a sort of half-way stage, I
used, on these Sutherlandshire journeys, to eat my piece of cake with a
double relish--I found, on last passing the way, similarly represented.
Its grey venerable walls, and dark winding passages of many steps--even
the huge pear-shaped lintel, which had stretched over its little door,
and which, according to tradition, a great Fingalian lady had once
thrown across the Dornoch Firth from off the point of her spindle--had
all disappeared, and I saw instead, only a dry-stone wall. The men of
the present generation do certainly live in a most enl